Perhaps drawing from the pressures of needing to make a great album, Bruce and the E Street band made an album about with a universal message about wanting to escape, even if you don't know where you want to go or how you want to get there. The album applies to all walks of life, whether you're a high school kid looking to get out of a small town, a thirtysomething looking to make a career change, or a fat old man looking to get back down to your fighting weight. The entire album is set during the summer and at night -- the ideal time to hatch an escape plan. You can't listen to this album without thinking that you can break free from the chains of your situation, whatever it may be, or at least make an attempt. Well, maybe not right now, since we're all stuck at home, but you get the point.
It dares you to "case the promised land," even if you never actually end up getting there. You wake up tired, work all day in a soul-crushing alternative sports-themed rug weaving job, where Old Man Blanchard is breathing down your neck, like you don't know how to work a fucking AVL Double Warp Beam Compu Dobby loom. You come home exhausted, hands dye-stained, your son smells like a combination of maple syrup and stale urine, your one daughter is bitching about your other daughter not wanting to play in the same world as her in Minecraft, that cyst on your 16-year-old dog's leg is growing its own cysts, but the vet won't operate because she's too old, and who wants to spend a couple grand on surgery if the dog might just die anyway? It's not like the vet's gonna give you your money back. Your wife is on the verge of tears because the air fryer broke, so "what the fuck [is she] going to do with all this falafel?!" You know you're stuck being a weaver even though you regret ever getting your Ph.D. in industrial decorative looming with a thesis on the resurgence of curling-themed tapestries in northwest Saskatchewan in the first place (and those fucking student loans have to get paid somehow!), but all you want really want to do is start a brewery that has punny heavy metal-related names. Born to Run tells you that, if nothing else, you at least have to take a home brewing class and see where it goes. Maybe you find out you have no patience for it or maybe you can't find the right kind of roasted malt for Stout At The Devil. But maybe you're a natural, and then the next thing you know, Binny's is stocking Every Gose Has Its Thorn, Wheat Child O' Mine, Bock You Like a Hurricane, Once Bitten Twice Rye, and Over The Pils and Far Away. You have to give it a shot. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the promise of Born to Run.
Favorite song from Side 1: "Night"
It's a toss-up between this and "Thunder Road," but I'm going with "Night" simply because it's not as well known. This is one of those songs that I can't understand why it's not bigger. It's frantic and catchy –- a celebration of the power the night holds when you're working at a job you hate. The line "you work nine to five and somehow you survive till the night" has always stuck out to me. Even in your first full-time job, whether that was a summer job in high school or a real job post-college, you're just working to get done with the day so you can forget about work at night.
Favorite song from Side 2: "Jungleland"
For the same reason I went with "Night" instead of "Thunder Road," I'm going with "Jungleland" instead of "Born to Run." About ten years ago, when Daughter was a newborn (and still unable to move around), I used to put Jester's iPod Touch in the crib with her and play the Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town albums on shuffle for Daughter as white noise to help her go to sleep. For some reason, "Jungleland" often seemed to be one of the first couple songs that would come on when I'd hit "shuffle," so I would listen to it while I was giving Daughter her pre-bed bottle. I had always like the song before then, but apparently hadn't really concentrated on it as much as I should have. It's an epic, for sure. The beginning strings set you up for the majesty of the next nine minutes, before the signature Springsteen piano sound, courtesy of Roy Bittan, brings some anticipation, building as Springsteen tells the story of low-level gangster Magic Rat. I love the second verse, particularly the lines "The midnight gangs assembled and picked a rendezvous for the night / They'll meet 'neath that giant Exxon sign that brings this fair city light." Great imagery. It's like a scene from The Outsiders. Then, after a massive sax solo from The Big Man, Magic Rat meets his fate ... tonight ... in ... Jungle ... land.
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